Metaphor CDs

How do you see yourself as a political educator? Do you see yourself as a civil servant, moderator, fire extinguisher, director or perhaps as an activist or rather a scientist?

Discussing your own professional self-image can help to sharpen it, question it and compare it with other ideas. A clear idea of your self-image and that of your colleagues can be particularly useful in the planning phase of a joint educational program in order to create a common starting point and promote mutual understanding of different working methods and approaches. Our metaphor CDs can be a valuable support here. They present a wide variety of metaphors that can help you to describe yourself in your professional role and to discuss this with others.

Possible uses

In a team:
Use the lunch break for a creative walk with your colleagues. Discuss the following question: Which metaphor best describes your self-image as a political educator based on the selected metaphor CD and why?

With a group of political educators:
A) Our metaphor CDs can also be used in workshops or seminars with multipliers to discuss the different self-perceptions. For example, at the beginning of a workshop, ask each participant to choose a CD from the case and ask the question: ''When you think of yourself as a political image maker, do you think this metaphor describes your role well or would you rather reject it as a role description? Why? Another option could be to combine the question with a positioning line in which the participants place themselves between the poles "This is how I see myself" and "This is not how I see myself".

B) Another option is to distribute the CDs around the room and ask the participants to position themselves where they see themselves best. Reflection questions could be: Where is there a cluster? Where is nobody standing? Why is that? And what surprised us?

Your ideas are wanted:
These were just a few ideas. If you have any other ideas, please let us know. We look forward to hearing about the creative ways in which you want to use or have used the metaphor CDs!

DIY instructions:
By the way, you can easily make the metaphor CDs yourself. You can find a collection of metaphors to print out yourself as well as instructions here. If you don't have any blank CD sleeves to hand, you can also work with laminated cards as an alternative.